Minimal displacement, they say, in a neighborhood already gentrifying would be a small price to pay for smarter growth, and for hundreds of below-market-rate units that developers would be required to build.

Foes claim the upzone would pave the way for more upscale development and turn one of the city’s most diverse neighborhoods into a playground for rich people.

The city planner’s work

When Seattle planner Dave LaClergue and others at the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development set out to address displacement, he began with the amount of expected development.

Historically, 3 percent of the city’s growth has been in the U District, LaClergue found. That share could swell to 7 percent because of the upzone, the light-rail station opening in 2021 and the UW making the neighborhood a hub for startups, the planner reckoned.

For each site in the neighborhood, he asked: What development would be allowed? How profitable? Does the owner control adjacent properties?

Those criteria helped LaClergue run a simulation: He allocated 5,000 units to the properties rated most likely to be developed. Some were parking lots.

The end product was a map of properties and, using tax records, LaClergue identified 40 existing housing units on them. Voilà! He had a demolition estimate.

The planner later gauged how many units would be torn down under a supercharged scenario in which every site that could be developed indeed was, and the U District added more than 9,800 units. That upper-range number was 275.

John Fox’s calculations

To come up with a very different number, John Fox started by walking the neighborhood.

The Seattle Displacement Coalition activist counted as endangered every building he thought might ever be torn down and those he thought might see rent hikes.

The neighborhood’s most ramshackle buildings are bulwarks against gentrification because they contain some of Seattle’s least-expensive market-rate units, he says.

To account for people sharing single-family houses, Fox says he tallied mailboxes rather than structures. To measure rents, he talked to some tenants and checked online listings.

Like LaClergue, Fox weighed what the upzone would allow on certain properties. But more than the planner, he relied on a not-so-scientific eyeball test.

Fox looked at existing buildings and wondered: Would someone like to knock this down and build something taller?

The longtime U District activist — who no longer lives in the neighborhood but works out of the University Heights Center — is skeptical of LaClergue’s prediction that the neighborhood would add 5,000 housing units. The planner’s own research says the upzone would allow as many as 10,000 to be built.

Fox’s survey last year identified 1,250 units as threatened. His total grew to 1,500 after officials tweaked the upzone proposal.

Very different numbers

LaClergue and Fox reached some very different conclusions.

For example, Fox marked the 123-unit Malloy Apartments in danger of demolition because the building’s block would be upzoned to 320 feet. LaClergue didn’t.

Though a new project could be much taller, other zoning controls would limit its girth and therefore the number of additional units that could be built, the planner said.

Fox listed a rooming house on a block that would be upzoned to 240 feet. But the site wouldn’t accommodate a large project on its own. LaClergue didn’t put it on his map.

Finally, Fox included the University Regency, where Ron Bass lives. The 71-year-old pays $700 per month at the 48-unit building, which didn’t make LaClergue’s map.

Bass agrees with Fox about what the upzone would mean. “They’re going to get rid of these buildings,” he said, gazing up, where he imagines new towers will rise.

But LaClergue says upzone opponents are missing the big picture. They’re not taking into consideration that the U District already is changing, he says.